The Stax thread - Page 140  

Try a well designed 10-interstage-10 amp, or an 841-interstate-75TL amp. 71A-IT-45 is good too, desite the oxide cathodes. All tubes that cost less than 300Bs, too.

The term "300B" is little more than a marketing excercise, heck Western Electric didn't even design the tube to be that good sounding (RCA's alternative, the 50 sounds better to these ears). The WE92A amplifier it designed for, on the other hand, is a work of art.

The true 572B tube, the one designed by Taylor's as an improvement on the 811A, is an entirely different tube from the ones Svetlana sold. It has a gain of ~190 and sounds different.

Putting aside that the very point of using transmitting triodes in an amplifier for electrostatics is that you want the output to be in the kilovolt range, that being the entire point. GM70s aren't that similar in sound to 845s.

My and Lynn's designs are already very similar. He uses the better 320B in most of his later designs. The initial use of 300Bs probably is more of a throwback to Herb Reichert's work than anything.

That's correct. The wonderful 47 is still plentiful and cheap, however.

Here's another adjective: "Thoriated sound". Yum.

Now I don't know the specifics of that double blind test, although I've heard annecdotes about it before, but either I have insanely good hearing or that test is seriously flawed as I have little trouble telling between two models of DHT, let alone telling one appart from a triode strapped IDHP. I can only concluded the 300B based amp had a flawed topology (most likely a very poor driver stage that seems endemic with 300B amps).

Indeed. But if you chose parts based on sound rather than press or pricetag, design and keep the topology to oneself, and it still sounds better? What then?

Well obviously topology matters the most. People who drive 845s off 12AX7s and think the result will be good need to be shot.

But I don't believe, I've proven so emperically, that part selection has no effect on sound, because it does. Otherwise I'd be using cheap blue polystyrene and electrolytic capacitors, cheap resistors, the lowest price transformers available, and 12A_7 family tubes driving triode-strapped pentodes, and that (along with the Williamson topology) was what turned the tube industry into such dire straights in the 60s. Electricity has to flow through all this stuff before it gets to your ears.

Tell me this, have you ever given a pair of electrostatic headphones more than, say, 800V-PP?

Take a look at Kevin's designs (1200V-PP), take a look at Mikhail's designs (1600V-PP), try things out with a transformer box (1:25+ voltage stepup ratio). Electrostatic headphones can take that, and it makes them sound very, very good.

Assuming you design the amp properly (ie, to not give you lethal amounts of current), it's not insane at all. And it sounds better that way.

You misunderstood me completely.

The Japanese have been designing DIY amps around DHTs for well over 35 years, but the phenomenon only really reached the English-speaking world around the early ninties. Aside from a few 211 designs like the Ongaku, the majority of the designs bought across were 300B based. The Japanese appriciate the 300B's tone, and don't mind its shortcomings, and vanguard of American's who tried DHTs had little experience with the other offerings to compare it with, and generally regarded something incapable of 10W as a little bit silly. As such, a lot of the early American DHT designs used 300Bs. Because of that, most of the really well designed early designs, such as the Flesh and Blood, were 300B based, and new designers inspired by these early designs very regularly opted for 300Bs on the first try because they know it's good and there is other people's work out there to give inspiration. How many amp designers in the world chose the 10 or the 75TL for their first-ever tube amp? I'd wager not a one.

I wasn't for a second refering to topology, I didn't use the world at all, Lynn states quite clearly that his first designs were inspired by the WE92A, I was talking about choise of tube. That was the point of your previous post, was it not, to comment on my views regarding the use of 300Bs?

Now the word "throwback" wasn't necessarily the best choice of word on my part, but please don't totally get the wrong idea of where I'm coming from.

I just don't know. All I know is that it diverges from what my own ears have told me in what I would regard as an unequivocal manner. If someone else's ears, heck if everyone else's ears differ from mine, then what can I do? If someone wants to invite me to participate in such a double-blind test, I'd be happy to obligue.

There's really no need for ad hominem, even if you're angry. I am merely stating things as I and I alone see them. I neither ask nor expect that you agree with anything I say.

Well that was the point of the test, yes. In my experience (notice the rather large qualifier there), amps sound pretty darn similar whether you can see them or not, provided (another qualifier) you give yourself a sufficiently long period of time to listen to it and appriciate its own traits. The same holds true for wine and coffee, too, at least with me (another qualifier!).

Humans might not use their auditory, olfactory, gustatory and pressure senses as much as we use our sight, but its not like we're completely incapable of putting any faith in them at all.

6SN7s are a flawed driver for 300Bs as they don't have enough anode current to drive them fully, and many, many, many 300B amps use them. So this is an inference, as I hoped one could have worked out from the sentence it was in.

Why not throw a 10 or a 45 in there and measure the plate current with a milliameter first, and then ridicule me. I'm not the only one who holds this view, either.

Seriously, don't you think you've overreacted just slightly to all this? So yes, I questioned a study I hadn't actually read because the findings differed widely from my own experience and stated such in a public place. People do that all the time in the world, on just about every internet forum. Are you going to launch a salvo of polemic at all of them? Or just me?

I have never claimed to have miraculous levels of acoustic aucity, or that what my own ears hear is going to be true for even one single other entity on this planet. I just tell people what I hear, and let them find out emperically whether I'm close to the mark or completely loopy. You have decided I'm firmly in the latter catagory, and that's fine to me. I don't need people to agree with what I hear to justify my existance.

You yourself decided there is nothing to gain from feeding an electrostatic headphone charges in the kilovolt range without finding out the answer with your own ears or going by the experiences of those you trust. We all make conclusions in life, and they're not always right. And that's totally fine, as everyone with a scientific bone in their bodies know deep down that you can't believe everything you read. To treat things as just one source on information amoung many. And of course you can disagree with them when they say things you disagree with. But why would you possibly need to attack them personally if they're actually receptive to what you say, irrespective of whether they agree or not? Will it make the world a better place or lead to some great insight into the world?

So relax. I meant no harm to anyone, even if my choice of words could have been better. I stand by my terribly phraised views, and always welcome a polite rebuttal or requests for clarification.

Well *shrugs*, that's life, I guess.

It would depend on the output tube, and the gain of the previous stages. All I know is that Mikhail claims that the standard version with EL34's (a tube capable of 800V on the anode) can go that high.

For the specifics you'll have to ask Mikhail.